Yesterday the Executive Council of the ASIL passed the following resolution for consideration by the full membership at its annual general meeting later today. As a member of the Executive Council, I am privy to the details of the meeting yesterday. But I will refrain from providing the back story about a meeting that is not open to...
Any of us who have lived long enough know those rare moments when you are part of an event that is unusually special. I had that strong sense today as I watched the opening ceremony of the ASIL annual meeting. It featured Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, ICJ Judge Rosalyn Higgins, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,...
Read this interesting summary by Jeff Jarvis of a speech by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian. In his speech, Rusbridger is questioning the very future of newspapers. “I love newspapers...
There is an important story developing in Germany about bloggers acting as "whistleblowers" for corporate misconduct. The issue has captured the German blogosphore, with the offending organization, Transparency International, now the top search request on Technorati. The story has been ignored in the MSM and the English blogosphere, but the details are available here. The short version is that a single...
I will be speaking tomorrow in Washington at the ASIL/ITA conference on "The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at 25: The Cases Everyone Needs to Know for Investor-State and International Arbitration." Details about the conference are available here. I served as a judicial law clerk for one of the American judges at the Tribunal in the early 1990s and...
Wow. It is rare for someone in your field to write something that is so obviously important about a subject that has completely escaped your attention. But I must admit that that is how Tim Wu's draft article on The World Trade Law of Internet Filtering hit me when I read it. Fresh, thoughtful, and concise. His topic is how...
There is an interesting editorial by Roger Cohen in the New York Times contending that the Abdul Rahman case shows deeper fisions between the West and Islam than we typically appreciate. Cohen highlights the fact that politicians throughout the West have condemned the threatened execution of a man for the simple act of embracing another faith. He also...
I came across some interesting statistics regarding how Americans use the Internet. According to the Pew Internet Project, approximately 72 percent of all American adults (145 million Americans) use the Internet, and 94 million use it daily. Approximately 104 million adult Americans (72 percent) report that they have used the Internet to gather news, while 40 million...
The Indian Supreme Court has defined cruelty and "mental torture" in a most unusual way. Details here. ...
Cardinal Roger Mahony of the archdiocese of Los Angeles has poured new wine into the old wineskin of civil disobedience. If a proposed immigration bill becomes law, he announced he will instruct the priests in his archdiocese to disobey the law and face the prospect of criminal prosecution. He clarified his position in an op-ed in the New York Times. ...
The remaining three members of the Christian Peacemakers Team ("CPT") who had been kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq are now free. As reported here, they were rescued by U.S. and British troops without firing a shot. The CPT's response? No mention of the efforts by the U.S. and British troops to free their colleagues. No word of...
The Washington Post had a confusing piece this weekend about the State Department's efforts to block compensation claims of the 52 American hostages held by Iran. The story attempts to paint a picture of the Bush Administration in general, and the State Department in particular, displaying callous disregard for the claims of the hostages against Iran. Quoting Rep. Brad Sherman,...
